Monday January 23, 2012
Sick and tired of Chuck: NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt.
© Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
For once NBC, not Fox, is this week's bad guy in the hatcheting of cult-favorite series, as NBC's chairman expressed disdain for the outgoing
Chuck even as
Fringe's producers expressed a modicum of hope for the future.
A remarkable story surfaced Sunday in which NBC chair Robert Greenblatt, now entering his sophomore year in the post, expressed exasperation that
Chuck's supposedly avid internet fanbase apparently wasn't actually watching it on Friday nights -- a situation that drove him to dump the show as soon as possible.
When reporters buttonholed Greenblatt during the Television Critics Association tour to get confirmation that NBC had burned off the series over the low-viewership holidays, the exec barked, "Well, did you see the ratings of
Chuck?"--"his tone," mused Bill Harris of the
Toronto Sun, "clearly revealing that he is tired of talking or even thinking about
Chuck."
"Unfortunately, that rabid fan base that was going crazy on the net didn't come to the show," Greenblatt groused. "And maybe they didn't come to the show because it was Friday, but you would think that audience would find the show. The show was getting a 'one' rating. So I think
Chuck's time had come."
Vik Sahay, who plays Lester, later suggested that NBCUniversal isn't taking a modern view. "Thinking about our fans," he said, "it's very possible that the Nielsen ratings system is just too antiquated to actually measure how many people are watching. Whenever talk of cancellation came up, there was such a groundswell of protest and support, it always seemed like it was a massively successful show."
But Greenblatt is focused on the set-top-box numbers. Pressed for whether he had authorized a conscious holiday burn-off of episodes, Greenblatt said, "Yeah, yes." He went on sourly: "
Chuck is over, let's alert the masses." Talk about cancellation with prejudice.
Chuck's series finale--and, clearly, it's
really really the series finale--airs Friday, Jan. 27.
Meanwhile, there were encouraging signs that
Fringe--publicly
put on notice by Fox earlier this month--isn't out of the game yet. The network's warning that
Fringe was a money-loser was intended as an incentive to Warners, which produces the show and presumably wants a fifth season to bring the number of episodes up around the magic syndication count of 100, to draw up a new deal more favorable to Fox. And
according to TVLine, those talks are now actually under way.
"We remain hopeful that
Fringe will be able to continue," co-creator J.J. Abrams said. The outcome of those talks will determine whether the last episode of season 4 will function as a season finale or a series finale.
Monday January 23, 2012
Grant Bowler will star in the Syfy series Defiance.
© Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images
Call Syfy what you will—Canceller of Universes, Adapter of That Which Does Not Need Adapting—but one thing this network doesn't do is rest on its laurels. Every new announcement hints at how the suits at this NBCUniversal company spend their days figuring out new ways to make money off of sci-fi/fantasy programming.
Part of this is image and branding. Though it's the 12th-ranked basic cable network for 2011 (USA continues to be on top), its viewership is growing, averaging 1.33 million total viewers in 2011—up 10% over 2010. Last week Syfy proudly announced to the advertising community that it ranked first with "igniters"—adults 18 to 49 who think of themselves as creative, inventive, imaginative and artistic—in a study conducted by the marketing consulting firm PSFK. Syfy's brand strategy has been balancing their appeal to this kind of consumer by broadening its offerings in both scripted and "unscripted" entertainment and seeking new ways to add profitability to the delivery of televised content.
One example is Defiance, a series starting production in April that is supposed to merge television with multiplayer online gaming for what the network says is the first time. Essentially this involves the simultaneous roll-out of a Syfy TV series and a Trion Worlds massive multiplayer online (MMO) shooter game. Trion says the PC/Xbox game will "interact" with the Syfy series: the game offers "persistence, scale, and customization" while the series provides "scope, story, and drama." Syfy has already experimented with tying its content to video game releases, and Defiance represents an effort to push that kind of connection to the next stage. Read More...
Monday January 23, 2012
© William Morrow
There were updates this week on several intriguing sci-fi/fantasy pilots, collectively promising us a rich and supernatural future:
666 Park Avenue—I reported in September that Alloy Entertainment, the folks behind such steamy youth-oriented dramas as Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries, had put into development a pilot based on the supernatural novel by Gabriella Pierce about a transplanted young couple find themselves managing New York City apartment building where the residents have all made deals with the devil in order to have their dreams fulfilled. This week ABC announced it had greenlit the pilot, from Fringe and Life on Mars writer and co-executive producer David Wilcox. So far, no casting. Everyone's very curious to see how this turns out with suds-loving Alloy and the character-drama-oriented Wilcox behind it. Melrose Place of the Damned, perhaps?
Rewind—Syfy has greenlit a two-hour pilot for the time-travel series Rewind, written by Justin Marks (who has Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li behind him and who's also developing scripts for a number of action thrillers including Mark Wahlberg's The Raven) and co-produced by BermanBraun, the folks behind Alphas and The Cape. The basic idea involves a team of military field operatives and civilian scientists who must use untested technology to travel back in time to change past events to prevent a horrible terrorist attack. "Justin Marks has created a time-travel series with an exciting innovative approach that really exemplifies Syfy's commitment to bring compelling storytelling to life," said Syfy honcho Mark Stern. My question is, how will their time-travel technology idea stack up against Jake Gyllenhaal in a box?
Beauty and the Beast—The CW has decided to go ahead with that reboot of the 1987 series version of Beauty and the Beast, greenlighting a pilot that updates the original CBS show as a contemporary romantic story with a procedural angle. Jennifer Levin (Felicity) and Sherri Cooper (Brothers and Sisters) are the writers, and two of the producers from the original series—Paul Junger Witt and C. Anthony Thomas—are on board for the remake, which might signal an interest in maintaining some continuity with the show's original look and feel.
Green Arrow—Still at The CW, a pilot for a series version of Green Arrow has gotten the green light as well. The plan is for a modern retelling of the DC Comics hero's story, written by Andrew Kreisberg (Warehouse 13) and Marc Guggenheim (FlashForward, Eli Stone, Jack & Bobby) from a story by Greg Berlanti and Guggenheim and with all three as executive producers. A-list pilot wizard David Nutter is expected to direct. And no, Justin Hartley is not attached. In fact, since this is a retelling of the story rooted in the original comics, we shouldn't expect continuity with the Smallville version of Green Arrow in general, despite the series being at the same network—though it's probably safe to expect a cutesy cameo from Hartley somewhere down the road if Green Arrow goes to series.
Powers—When the superhero/police procedural Powers didn't show up on FX's schedule despite a ostensibly solid pilot in the can starring Jason Patric and Lucy Punch, those of us who were looking forward to the comic book adaptation feared the worst. But Powers is not dead, not yet. "We didn't pick the pilot of Powers up; we went back and Chick Eglee, who had written it, did a fairly substantial rewrite that would require pretty extensive reshoots of the pilot," FX president John Landgraf said earlier this month. "Right now we're in the process of deciding whether to pull the trigger on the reshoot." We should get a final decision in the next couple of months. Keep your fingers crossed, Powers fans.
Monday January 23, 2012
Tom Baker in "Shada," the untransmitted Doctor Who story.
© BBC
Originally slated to be the grand finale to the 1979-1980 season of
Doctor Who, "Shada"—a six-part adventure by outgoing story editor Douglas Adams—famously progressed as far as completing several days' worth of location filming at Cambridge and one of three days in the studio, only to be scrubbed, with much anguish, after a prolonged strike by the BBC's technicians' union chewed up the story's remaining studio dates. Thus the truncated season 17, Tom Baker's sixth in the title role, ended unexpectedly with "The Horns of Nimon," which was supposed to be the season's cheaper story that allowed greater expense for "Shada."
Ever since then, "Shada" has been one of the great "what ifs" of
Doctor Who—shows that didn't become what they were supposed to be thanks to real-world snags. (Other notorious what-ifs include "The Five Doctors" if Tom Baker had agreed to participate after all, and "Mawdryn Undead" with the originally intended William Russell.) But "Shada" is unique, the only story that made it into production but was never broadcast, a loss felt particularly keenly because it would have expanded on the history of the Time Lords (Shada is the name of the Time Lords' secret prison). The real, unmade "Shada," like tesseracts, antimatter, and tachyons, can only be known to us through imperfect reflections.
Read More... 
